Château du Hureau
Nearly midway between Angers and Tours, along the middle part of the Loire’s languid length lies its clutch of red wine appellations, and it is the village of Dampierre-sur-Loire, near Saumur, that Château de Hureau has carved its reputation.
Domaine de la Taille aux Loups
Owner Jacky Blot is one of those charming iconoclasts of wine whose passion oozes out of more pores than he possesses. Almost everything he says makes seductive sense even if you don’t actually quite understand it, and one could easily lose days of fascinating conversation and thesis in his company.
Castagna
Ex-film director Julian Castagna bought his vineyard land in Beechworth, Victoria, in 1997, planting shiraz, sangiovese and viognier, with nebbiolo following in 2001.
Tenuta di Fessina
Tuscan wine producer Silvia Maestrelli, and Federico Curtaz bought Tenuta di Fessina on Etna’s northern slopes in 2007, part of the growing band of producers on this active volcano.
Plunkett-Fowles
Plunkett-Fowles arose as a merger of two family wine businesses in 2005, both located in the rather rugged, granitic region of Strathbogie Ranges, remote even though it is only around 130km north of Melbourne. The business is run by chief winemaker Sam Plunkett, and CEO Matt Fowles.
Quinta da Gaivosa
The Gaivosa estate is one of the six Douro properties of the Alves de Sousa family. Its 25 hectares of vines have an average age of 60 years, planted on the typical schist soils of the Douro valley.
Domaine Philippe Delesvaux
Philippe, and his wife Catherine Delesvaux, of the eponymous domaine, make exquisite sweet wine of the highest order in the Loire’s Coteaux du Layon.
Cobaw Ridge
Alan and Nelly Cooper set up Cobaw Ridge in 1985, having bought the land in 1981 as a place from where they could commute (quite lengthily) to Melbourne. Their original plan had been to sell the grapes, but they were smitten and decided to make wine before the first crop was off the vine, which was in 1989.
Pizzini Wines
The King Valley in Australia’s Victoria attracted several migrant families from Italy, who later moved into the winemaking traditional to their homeland. The Pizzini family were one of those pioneers of grape growing and winemaking, and they are renowned for growing several Italian grape varieties.
Baglio del Cristo di Campobello
In the chalky white soils south of the town of Campobello di Licata in the province of Agrigento in Sicily lies the Bonetta family property of Baglio del Cristo di Campobello. The name may not easily roll off an anglophone tongue, but the wines roll across that same tongue in a much more delicious fashion.
